I'd like to hear more examples of what casting rotations people use and why.
One simple trick I use is if I can anticipate I am about to get a pushback from melee or magic damage, I work in a moonfire or insect swarm so it will occur during the 1sec GCD so there is no delay in casting.

What rotation strategies do people use against certain mobs or to improve mana or dps efficiency?

IS, SFx4 seems to work the best for me, but it is fight specific.

First off great job on this spreadsheet. Works very well however I have found a few isues:

1.) The time till oom seems low, but I can't figure out what exactly causes it
2.) Nether of my trinkets are avalible, (Neltharion's Tear and Shard of the Scale) I realize these are old trinkets being from nef and ony, but I have yet to find anything better even since I started raiding at 70. (I have added them to my copy but I think they are worth adding to yours)
3.) If you enter a fight duration lower than the Mana Regeneration Calculation delay then all the calculations are n/a even if the use is set to no for that one, (should ignore it if the fight is shorter than delay no matter what the yes/no is)
4.) With a latency of 0.4 the sheet says I should do MF/wrath and with 0.2 it says MF/IS/wrath mabey I'm missing somthing but wouldn't more lag benifit from dots rather than something you have to keep re-casting?

edit:
5.) Would it be posible to add a new field, time till oom, (ignoring the Expected fight Duration just using when your out of mana the first time, might be longer than the expected fight duration, might be much shorter. Currently the time till oom counts regen after you initialy go out of mana before the expected fight is over)

Time until oom will always seem low, because when theorycrafting you often ignore the huge amount of time in combat you spend not attacking. This has a huge significance on time until oom in reality, but in theory it doesn't matter because that's time you're not DPSing anyway. It only really matters in terms of mana regen. Overall it's not something you can't include, it's just very hard to figure out the % time while not casting without extreme analysis of said bossfight. The more regen you have (from raid buffs etc) the more significant this factor is.

I found the times pretty believable when I input my gear & buffs. Especially for, say, mostly unbuffed, chain-casting IS,MF,Wrath. Would regularly run me OOM in ~2 minutes.
I've been neglecting pre-BC gear because there are going to be relatively few Moonkin with those items. They were, however, part of my motivation for adding the custom-gear section, and providing instructions on how to add items on your own copies.

Fixed, for future versions. Just had to use some "if" statements to keep Excel from trying to divide by 0. A convenient work around is to put all the delays to 0.

NG is applied against the laggy cast time. So, instead of 1.7 non-NG, 1.5 NG, you're getting 1.9 non-NG & 1.5 NG. The NG procs do nothing for the DOT cast times. Also, what degree of variation are you seeing between the two cycles? In RL, the impact of crits & finite sample size are likely to have an observable variance that's often within the same range as the top 2-3 suggested cycles.

This would be a self-referential loop. It would check to see how long you could cast to know how much mana you'd regenned, then estimate how much longer you could cast with that mana, then check to see how much more you'd regen, then check to see how much longer... It can be done, but it's annoying. I don't really know what the utility of that information is.

EDIT: Err, and I know there is probably a closed form solution to the iterative loop. But the sheet & my brain aren't designed towards finding/using it.

Thanks Efejel for this great resource, this and the equipment list has been a great help to me. I leveled balance at release and went back again post 1.8, I wish I had a resource like this back then.

A few questions for my fellow raiding moonkins, this thread seamed like the best place to get some answers.

1)Gear- (note I have plenty of hit gear I sub in for bosses, despite what my armory shows) I don't have any mana problems when I use a starfire based rotation. Is giving up damage to get 4 piece Malorne worth it for switching to a wrath based rotation? By the spreadsheet, it is enough given my gear on gruul to not go oom, yet somehow is lower dmg-which seems counterintuitive to me. Is CoS changing it that much?

2)Performance- I'm usually top 3ish on damage, but it is getting harder as my guild's performance improves. We are currently going through a transition as we are using WWS to improve our uneven performance. The spreadsheet shows solid numbers for moonkin in a raid setting, and I've found it accurate on Dr.Boom and some other theorycraft tests. However in actual raids my dps is lower than it says it could be. Any suggestions on what I can do to keep up as my guildmates improve?

WWS of our last 2 Gruul's raids
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=t4fl1etokyl51
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=fg6dc56kakwms

I guess I am concerned about hampering my guilds raids, despite the fact that I'm putting out solid numbers. Is there a point in SSC/TK/BT where being a moonkin is nonviable and I should be healing?

thanks

Thanks. I'm glad people are getting use out of this! With my new versions I'm seeing 300 downloads within 2 weeks, so it seems worth the few hours per week I'm spending on it!

The two main factors on W vs. S is CoS & NG. For those with "normal" lag, Starfire seems to reign supreme. There could also be some "cycle rounding" effects of W vs. S and how closely the predicted average cast times, including lag & NG procs, coincide with a 12s cycle.

Since I didn't really develop this spreadsheet until after I had stopped raiding, I'm glad to hear someone has confirmed it's real-world utility. As far as disparities you see in raids:
1) Debuffs - in addition to it being absolutely imperative that CoS doesn't drop, how does the uptime of JoW and/or SS relate to what you've input in the spreadsheet? Further, are you responsible for casting FF? And, perhaps most importantly, is your shadow priest--if you have one--applying VT with the "highest priority" in their spell queue?
2) Buffs - it's entirely possible you might sometimes get the non-talented DS even though you have a DS priest in the raid. Same with say BoW, impMotW, and/or forgetting to eat your +dmg food.
3) Mana regen - the spreadsheet makes the simplifying assumption that NO MANA REGEN EVER GOES TO WASTE. Of course, in practice this can be quite difficult to accomplish.

Suggestion: if you have a PC that can manage it, try recording your fights. You might be surprised at the areas you see where you can improve when you get to watch through with no pressure to perform

WWS seems to be an excellent tool; if you don't have the capacity to record the fight, I'd say it's possibly the next best thing.

As far as hampering raids, I understand your concern. I felt I had to quit when I was regularly falling 7th - 10th on damage meters during boss kills, because even though I was beating some "pure DPS" classes, I had little room to improve and lacked the time necessary to invest in continued consumable usage at the rate I had been. And I would be willing to bet your guild would rather have you switch to feral than resto, unless 2.1 has done that much for Lifebloom.

I guess my concern is really much more one of advancement. Right now, looking at my numbers compared to other Gruul/Mag level guilds my 800 or so dps on a tank and spank seems solid and comparable to mages/locks/shadow priests at that level. However looking at other guilds WWS reports I pretty much never see a moonkin in a similiar position, especially at a higher level. Is the conventional wisdom about moonkins right, and I'm just an anomaly trying way too hard, or is there real potential there.

I would love to see a moonkin from a higher end guild post a WWS log or similiar about what sort of real raid damage they are doing in late SSC or TK.

I'm in much the same situation as you Kellarus. A little backstory;

I'm fairly happy with my gear, I'm a Spellfire tailor and I have 1 piece of the Spellstrike set soon to have the helm aswell. I am currently working on my gear so I can become hit capped and am nearly at that point (next on the list is getting rid of my cruddy +hit trinket so i can have the Icon equipped during boss fights, should be at that point in a month or so). [http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...urne&n=Celorne]

My guild has Mag/Gruul on farm and are working on SSC (Lurker on farm, Morogrim+Warlord up next) and I'm getting up to 4-5 on the meters (we have a fairly melee centric raid. We only have on average 1 SP/raid which goes to the healers and we are yet to recruit a Elemental Shaman. Also we dont usually have CoS up).

Anyway judging from what I've been hearing soon i'll start dropping down the meters and will eventually be next to useless as balance, this is only componded by the fact that very few of the more progressed guilds that I've seen even have a moonkin. Of course I dont want this to happen as I love the balance tree (despite it being bulky and point hungry) and I like being a caster.

So my question to you other Moonkins with higher level raiding experience is; Do you see yourself as a useful and positive addition to your raid (i.e does your DPS when combined with the DPS you add to the raid equal slightly above a 'True' Caster)?

I'd also like to second the notion for some logs of TK/Late-SSC Encounters. Also does my gearing myself up in mainly cloth caster gear seem foolish or is it the only way I'm going to stay competitive in the later stages of the raiding game? And finally I'd like to ask Efejel how were your raids being stacked? Caster heavy or Melee Heavy? I remember seeing a SS of one of your boss fights (wanting to say Void Reaver) but I cant remember where I saw it so a link would be great.

......sorry about the winding post but I wanted to get all of my questions out there.

I might be able to provide some data for it soon. The main problem is that while offtanks are not that easy to come by, ranged damage dealers are just piling up everywhere. Thats a big point in "letting" someone specc moonkin for raids in a working raiding guild setup.

The next thing is equipment. Most druids come from a resto point in raids, then went to the feral part because of its new viability. Providing full gear and enchants plus pots is a big money sink with only boe epics and even as an enchanter like me for a third specc.
The next thing is what raiding gear you get. Taking away epic rings/necks/cloth items from pure raid dmgcaster is frowned upon to say the least, leaving you with an awesome 1 epic bop leather spelldmg item far into BT and the set tokens you wont be able to take for reasonable prices for an offspecc until you are at least 1 full tier ahead raidprogression wise.

Meaning you will try to compete in a t5 environment in t4 gear or t6 in t5. The most reasonable choice for me at least will be to take the surplus t4+5 which are just there due to random amount of one token dropping very often, using the boe epic set ring and neck and picking some cheap items like the magtheridon spelldmg ring plus some kara gear and to replace the tokens i simply cant get with gladiator gear from surplus points.

All alot of effort for maybe a simple "no, cant compete" in the end. Ill do it anyway, im sure of it

I think my situation is a little abnormal in that my guild has always had a billion druids (we once had literally a third of the raid made up of druids, I love my class, it worked surprisingly well). I've gotten to be "the moonkin" for a long time now and my guild has been really cool about upgrades, etc. I'm pretty solidly established as a primary dps caster, and have equal priority with mages/locks/priests etc. So I'm not worried about falling behind in gear.

My worry is more one of taking that gear, but possibly fallling behind or that it would be better used by others. I love my spec, I love that I can be dps in one fight and change gear and be a healer in the next. I guess I always just feel a little guilty whenever we are short a healer for a fight (even if there is already 2-3 resto druids).

I just feel like I'm playing a completely different class from the one that I see on forums, and I'm worried I'm missing some big liability. That's why I think this spreadsheet is an amazing product in that it's been confirming the numbers I've been seeing in game. It's extremely nice to get some hard theorycrafting to counter when the dumb mage goes "lol oomkin".

Who knows, maybe in a few months conventional wisdom will be bitching about overpowered moonkin. It took a long time for the community opinion on shadow priests to come around, I just hope to see something similiar.

Like, totally. A reputation reward blue in place of the pants + a t4 helm that lets me use MSD nets me only 1131.8 DPS vs. 1140.2. Surely that's worth the several hours to farm for the many many materials required.

You are correct Efejel, acquiring the the spellstrike legs is not required for adequate dps. There are many viable options outside of the craftable legs.

Did the latest patch push enough gear updates I should be concerned? I checked Sapph's equip list and noticed a few updates, but not nearly the number assoc. with 2.1.

Uhm, theres a new pvp moonkin ring in ssc.
A leather belt was found in hyjal.
The new pvp gear is noteworthy. Especially weapons, which excede any pve options right into late BT.


I never really looked at your gear list, so im not sure what extend you had it itemized.

Spellstrike now properly procs off some spell casts it didnt before. not sure if you even considered it didnt. This effected locks mostly as it didnt proc off of spells that used a base % of your mana to cast. namely curse of shadow/elements for them. While I dont think we even have a offensive spell that was base %, off the top of my head.

No, procs like that (and activated trinkets) are basically left to the user to discern a value.

Trinkets you can model as average damage over time, but this discounts their true damage value (cast your dots twice in one activation = profit) and inflates their effective uptime (in best case you will occasionally be mid-cast when it comes off cooldown, worst case you'll forget to use it or be silenced, etc. every time you activate it).

And procs, well, they're usually rotation-specific, which the spreadsheet doesn't necessarily handle well. I also have to know the proc rate, which I never have/still don't for Spellstrike (largely b/c I think it's a waste of time/materials vs. Druidic Helmet of Second Sight + Kurenai Kilt/Tempest Leggings -- in the time it takes you to farm the primals after you have those extremely easy to get blues, you should be seeing upgrades through PvE or Arena, and those upgrades might gain you access to the all-important meta gem).

That's essentially what I was trying to say in short-hand. The long version:
NG only has the effect on Wrath that, in the best case, counters some of your lag. If you don't have high lag, NG + Wrath = negligible benefit. OTOH (on the other hand) the combined effect of NG which will have an impact on your Starfire, and the boost to the pathetic base DPS of Starfire given by Curse of Shadow, results in generally better performance by Starfire based rotations. This is possibly further enhanced by how closely a primarily Starfire based rotation will come to an exact 12 second cycle.
So, either you understood me perfectly and were simply elaborating for those who didn't get the shorthand, or we're conveniently on the same wavelength in spite of my poor communication, which made you think I was saying something about Wrath spam + casting Starfire off of NG procs!

I was wondering if there were established Pawn values for a moonkin? Possibly including socket weighting too. I'm not great at mathematics myself so I don't really know what value to assign each stat.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as it seems so easy to find values for Cats or Bears.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...12595494&sid=1
Sapphiron has a working calculator. It's pretty impossible to assign static weights to crit, hit, mana (regen), since it's very fight & current level of gear specific. Sapph's calc spreadsheet will estimate based on your current gear level, etc.

I just did some basic number crunching based on changing values for +crit, +hit, and +spell damage with my own spreadsheet and this is what I picked up.

Please note that I equate 1mp5=10spdam/heal. If you don't value it as such, your mileage may vary.


Mp5 = 0.10
Spirit = 0.01 (If you have Intensity, otherwise negligible)
Int = 0.28
Spell Damage = 1.00
Spell Crit Rating = 0.57
Spell Hit Rating = 1.19

This is, of course, subject to debate I'm sure. What I'm noticing is that my values do not favor +hit quite so much as the spreadsheet linked above. I haven't really put the numbers to use. If you want the calculations... I'll try to see which post-it note they're on somewhere on my desk.


I am in the process of reworking some numbers as well, so stay tuned!

I have updated the numbers, which were significantly off because I wasn't paying attention to my algebra. :/

Don't discount impDS & Innervate when valuing spirit. Also, I think Sapph's numbers for spell hit may be a little high--I haven't checked the calculations, but I'd expect 1.1 - 1.3 dmg per point of hit, which is exactly what you found.

This is true, I do not think of Innervate because I usually have to give that to our mana-starved healers. That and it's *very* rare that I get to Moonkin-it-up in raids, usually I'm healing.

So, I'll play with some more numbers and see what I can get for spirit. The above is without taking Innervate into account.